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I'm actually thinking of building a high-end CHA47 to get a little more practice, then something fancy |
Sorry to be pedantic, but a lot of people misuse the term "CHA47" -- that only refers to an Apheared 47 on a Hansen board. I ask because "high end CHA47" isn't very high end at all -- about all you can easily do is use better op-amps and add an out-board power supply circuit. To some extent, you can also use better capacitors, but the Hansen board limits how big those capacitors can be.
When I think of a high-end Apheared 47, I think of protoboard. Then you can get really wild.
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Have you build the Morgan Jones before? |
Sorry, no.
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I hit the hansen link it sent me to email... Will the board help me with construction? |
Absolutely. You just solder the parts in and you're done. Even when you have a pre-planned layout like my tutorial gives you, it's still slower to build on protoboard. And, I'm not aware of any sample layouts for a Hansen (or an A47 for that matter) on protoboard, so it will be even slower to build these on protoboard than on PCB.
The main disadvantage of PCB is that it's inflexible. Sometimes a PCB can have flexibility designed into it, like my META42 board, but even then, it only has as many points of flexibility as the designer thought up in advance. With protoboard, you have as much flexibility as your protoboard budget allows.
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I spent like forty bucks at digikey! So much for the twenty dollar amp! |
Heh. I admit, $20 is definitely low-balling it -- absolute bare-bones. To hit that target, you need to:
1) Use OPA2134s instead of 2132s. This is false economy in my opinion, because a 2134 won't sound as good at lower voltages as a 2132 will, so you end up spending more money in batteries.
2) Use Radio Shack switches. If you avoid the micro-mini ones, you can get NKK-like quality without the NKK price.
3) Use a mint tin or similar for the case. This is probably the biggest single cost savings.
4) Use only a pair of 1/8" jacks. No RCAs, no 1/4" jacks.
5) Go with metalized polypropylene caps. They're smaller and cheaper, and fairly close to film and foil polypropylene in performance.
6) Don't socket the chips
7) Use cheaper knobs. Those Kilos I recommend are fairly spendy. ($5+ apiece.)
You probably had to buy extras of some things, too, so that jacked the cost up some, I'm sure.